a newspaper man adjusts his pen

Saturday, June 9, 2007

What are the odds?


There is a photographer in Eastern Pennsylvania who goes by the screen name, 51 eggs, and does an outstanding job of documenting the end of the Industrial Revolution.
His shot, shown above, looks like something pulled from the archives of the historical society in Bethlehem. However, it depicts the city today, how it looks 12 years after Bethlehem Steel Corp. idled a hulking steel mill that defined the area. Those of us living to the west in the Pittsburgh region can sympathize with Bethlehem, as many of us watched the steel industry collapse here three decades ago. The stores close, towns crumble to pieces and populations dwindle. That’s the legacy of big steel. Bethlehem seems to be frozen in time, but that is about to change with a dramatic plan to convert the old mill into a sparkling casino. Take a minute and look at this video:

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